Breaking news. Trump has appointed Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA. Pruitt has fought to weaken environmental protection regulations and has banded together with other state attorney generals to insure profits for oil, gas and coal companies. So what was supposed to be an agency to protect the environment, now becomes its worst enemy. If the trend continues of appointing people to do the exact opposite of what their department is entrusted to do, Trump will appoint a Secretary of Labor who is against raising the minimum wage, the Paycheck Fairness Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and one who favors Right to Work laws. Can it get any worse? Probably, so stay tuned.

December 9th. It didn’t take long for my prediction to become a reality. Andy Puzder, Trump’s nomination for Secretary of Labor is against unions, calls the minimum wage a “restriction,” and if he could he would replace workers with machines because they can’t take vacations or sue their employers when they break the law. So yes, it can get worse. The question is where will it end?

Trump’s appointments so far consist of four racists including the potential Attorney General, if he gets Senate approval, which he didn’t last time he was appointed due to his racists views. Add to that, the appointments who are border line mysogynists, given their opposition to birth control the covering the cost of conception in federally sponsored health care programs, their opposition to Medicaid and Medicare, and their opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. There are five billionaires which makes Trump’s team the most elitist in American history, diametrically opposed to his anti-establishment rhetoric. And what is there in his appointments to assuage the pain that he played on to win a large group of his supporters? There ain’t shit. And speaking of shit, will it hit the fan when the promised jobs and better living conditions don’t materialize and his supporters discover that they have been duped?

Abraham Lincoln’s made a prophetic statement when he pronounced that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Although this referred to the question of slavery, still it is relevant and a frightening prospect given that, according to a CNN/ORC poll, 80% of all Americans feel that the USA is even more divided than before the election. If, against all odds, a recount suggests that there were irregularities, something Trump just suggested, the suspicion and even hate between the Republicans and Democrats will divide the nation even more and the possible outburst of emotion could likely be even more frightening.

When false news get moe clicks and likes than objective news, when people only seek to reinforce their own prejudices and hate and when a president-elect profits on this phenomenon while constructing his own false news, then a country is on a downward spiral. Democracy is dependent on balanced news and an informed citizenry? What happens when this, to an increasing degree, disappears?

Trump won the Rust Belt and thus the election by promising to bring back jobs to America. It’s a gigantic bluff. Only one of eight jobs lost to the US has gone abroad. The other seven have been “lost” to digitalization, robotization and automation. Thinking he can turn back technology is as illusory as thinking he can stop job loss by building a wall. The protectionist wall will raise the cost of goods, lower manufacturers’ profits and lead to inflation. The production chain of American goods goes through several countries and if you add tariffs to each link, the costs will go to the consumer. Another thing that Trump failed to mention is that many of the Rust Belt jobs went to the Sun Belt where production costs are lower. Will he then follow his logic and set up tariff barriers between the Sun Belt and the rest of the US? What will happen when the Rust Belt workers discover that the promises on which they pinned their hopes are a bluff? I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Trump when it happens.